Catalan Mediterranean Restaurant — Restaurant in Rancho Mirage

The good the bad and the ugly.

Let me start this off saying that I have never taken an offer from anyone to change my reviews. I have received a few offers which is nice on their part but I'm not an Eric Cartman (for you South Park fans). I have given most places a second chance but I doubt this will not be one of them. Any positive reviews of this restaurant must be paid for or these people are insane (I think we saw one of their insane customers. Read below). I have never written such a negative review but this was bad.

The experience started out nice enough. It's a nice setting. We were seated at a table for four and there were only two of us for Valentines dinner. This was a little odd since we were surrounded by empty tables for two. The server seemed nice enough and we ordered a bottle of Hill sauvignon blanc and the Chef's tapas plate. Another staff member brought us bread and some wonderful pesto. The pesto was the best part of the meal. The wine arrived and they poured us each half a glass. It seemed OK at first so the evening progresses. The tapas plate arrives and it was somewhat average. Nothing to write home about or Yelp about. It all went down hill (no pun intended about the wine) from there.

The main reason I chose Catalan was because I saw that they had paella. Paella is my favorite dish of all. I have driven to Orange County before just to have it. Figue in La Quinta used to have a wonderful version of paella but they are now closed. Catalan's paella is terrible. It's beyond terrible. It tastes EXACTLY like old Zatarain's big easy jambalaya 90 second microwavable rice that's been reheated. Then they tossed in 4 of the smallest clams I have ever seen (see the pictures), three small shrimp, a couple small slices of the same sausage they had on the tapas plate, absolutely no chicken (as listed on the menu), and certainly no mussels as pictured right on their website (see attached picture). As far as saffron is concerned, there was no detectable note of it. I doubt they use it because of the cost. Enough about my disaster.

My wife ordered the Rigatoni & Veal Bolognese. The flavor would have been fine if they hadn't dropped an entire salt shaker into her plate. My wife loves salt but it was even too much for her. She had me try it and it actually was burn the back of your throat salty. Maybe a sous-chef or assistant spilled the salt and didn't want to get in trouble so they passed it on. I don't know, but wow! I hope no one was on a low sodium cardiac diet.

The server never came back to refill the wine glasses so I took the wine out be the bucket and poured my wife and I another half glass of wine. This time We both noticed quite a bit of sediment in the wine. Some people mistake this to be crystallized sugars but in fact it is more likely to be potassium bitartrate. This usually doesn't bother me but with the next pour it became apparent that there was something wrong. I put my glasses on and then saw that there was copious amounts of sediment (see the pictures). We had to stop drinking the wine.

My wife has a great sense of humor and kept laughing after each disaster followed by “Happy valentines day!” By this point we just wanted to get out of there. I finally flagged someone over and asked for the check so we could salvage some of our evening. I didn't care, I just wanted OUT! I gave the person who brought the bill my card and waited. That's when we saw what must have been one of their regulars come in (with her dog). Not a service dog (no vest, no collar), not a cute little dog. It was a medium sized mutt type poodle mix. She carried it in as they sat her next to us. She first put the dog on the floor but this made the dog unhappy so then they gave the dog his own chair. They probably eat from the same fork. This must be a health code violation. Everyone around us was dumbfounded. To add insult to injury, when they brought back the credit card slip to sign my card was missing. I had to go get it myself. Go figure. Happy...

This was the first time that I visit Catalán Restaurant, it was to celebrate my Brother's birthday, we were a party of 7. We love Spanish/Mediterranean food, we were looking specifically for Paella and Catalán Restaurant seemed like a good option, we have been wanting to visit for quite some time but it is difficult with a 5PM opening time. I made a reservation, got a text message asking me to confirm that "I'Il be there", I replied "YES" and everything seemed to be on track. I get an E-mail the day of, asking me to confirm that I will be showing up, from my perspective this was already answered by TEXT (don't know how many times is enough to confirm), I didn't see the E-mail until Friday (05/24/2024), by the time I checked, my reservation was already cancelled at 10:59AM even though I confirmed through TEXT MESSAGE. I proceeded to call and left a message (Restaurant does not open until 5PM) to ask them to call me back as soon as possible because my plans for the day were based on that visit to the restaurant. I went ahead and made another reservation (that was confirmed) for 05:30PM just in case. I called multiple times on my way to the restaurant to find out what was going on but noone answered. I made on time for the 05:30PM reservation, I came in and thankfully the place was completely empty but this was very frustrating and upsetting to say the least. I don't know if it is the reservation app or the restaurant but someone has to get it together as you give the impression to be a high end restaurant but this business practice is below standards. That being said, I am understanding and considering that the restaurant was empty I decided to not make a big deal about it and move on. We were sat by a very nice hostess/waiter, she was super friendly, professional and overall delightful. As we were going through the menus I noticed that there was some type of sauce on multiple pages. Once again, I exercised empathy, brought it up to the waiters attention (she apologized properly) so it didn't happen with other clients later on the day. This wouldn't be a big deal but it might be linked or give the impression to be linked to the reason I am writing this review, the service, food and ambience get 5, 1 and 3 respectively, the food was OK (a 3) but my son came back home and was unable to sleep because he was vomiting (5 to 6 times) throughout the night, he is dealing with a 100.8 fever, a headache and symptoms potentially related to contaminated foods, drinks, or surfaces. I was already thinking about not coming back but after this, I will DEFINITELY NOT BE COMING BACK. I wanted to send the review and situation directly to the restaurant but there's no way to contact the restaurant other than phone and based on my experience it was not answered and voicemail is not being checked. I would highly recommend to add an E-mail contact as my main intention was to bring my concerns and bad experience to the restaurant Manager/Owners and not expose it in a public setting like Google/yelp. I just hope my son gets better soon. If you would like to get a reference of who I am, my total was $532.73 at 05:45PM.

Reply:

My son had Paella Mixta, Chef's Mixed Tapas, Chorizo Soria, Serrano Ham, Manchego Cheese,...

We made reservations for 7:30 three weeks in advance for a birthday dinner. We arrived 45 minutes early so we could have a drink at the bar before being seated for dinner. They literally had to turn on the lights at the bar because there was no one there. There was no air conditioning…only a swamp cooler with the outside temps hovering 115.Technically we should have walked out but we hung in there and sweat it out. Very unpleasant to say the least. Why we didn’t get a txt message or phone call earlier warning us there was no air conditioning is beyond us. That was very poor management. There was one table occupied with two people when we arrived at the restaurant. They left within 15 of us arriving. At this time we were the only customers in the restaurant and this being a Saturday night (prime dinner time). Above the bar there is a big sign that advertises specialty cocktails. I ordered an espresso martini. I was told sorry they don’t have espresso can I settle for regular coffee…which I said sure. Even using regular coffee in the drink they’ had to brew it which took 15 minutes. We were seated for dinner promptly at 7:30. There were two people who waited on us and we honestly they were quite pleasant and attentive. Please look who was working the evening of 7/13/24 and commend them. I apologize I did not get their names. Finally another table of customers came in. The entire time we were there from 6:45-approximately 9:00 it was only us and the one other table. We ordered scallops,paella and two sides of mushrooms. The scallops were delicious. The paella was mediocre. The mushrooms were very bland and quite chewy. Like rubber. We had key lime pie for dessert and it was just ok. We had wanted to try this restaurant for a long time and had much higher expectations but we were very let down. To the owner/manager… your staff which we encountered were great… but if they don’t have the tools to work with it looks very bad on the restaurant as a whole. We dropped $200 total and there were a few things that were just absolutely not worth the cost. Great location. Great building. Great staff that WE encountered. You have everything you need to do better. Your reply to our review is lamb on several accounts. We should have been told before hand about all the issues it most certainly would have altered our decision to keep the reservations that obviously were not needed. You had our contact info and you did not use it. There is no way we could or would recommend this establishment. Very very...